Q&A with George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic

Iridium chief executive Matt Desch spoke with Spaceflight Now on the eve of the first launch for the company’s next-generation satellite fleet, discussing the $3 billion upgrade’s technical and financial ramifications and his feelings before deployments begin in orbit.

Boeing’s work on the International Space Station, the CST-100 Starliner commercial crew capsule and NASA’s heavy-lift Space Launch System are under the umbrella of John Elbon, who leads the company’s space exploration division in Houston.

Marc Rayman is chief engineer on NASA’s Dawn mission, which has run out of fuel after a 11-year interplanetary journey that explored Vesta and Ceres, the two largest objects in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.